Research just completed by the City, University of London has revealed that men still prefer to earn more than their spouses and get satisfaction and get a psychological boost when they get a pay rise that widens any pay superiority they may have over their female partners. However women don’t have the same ’ego boost’ if they earn more than their male partner and get a pay rise. This saddens me and shows how far we have to go in gender equality. Of course, men are genetically built over centuries to be the hunter and bread winner and it shouldn’t surprise us that they still think and feel this way about money. Women on the other hand are the family nest builders who make sure all is well with the family group and so don’t have this personal emotional tie with money in the same way.
These are generalist views and I wish this research hadn’t found this anomaly. It will only be when we have no emotional charge to gender differences that we will have become a truly equal world. We can help this cause by educating all people about money and how it works and to take the fear and emotion out of it. Money is neither good nor bad: it’s not the 8th wonder of the world or the 8th deadly sin – it just tis! It isn’t evidence of superiority.
We all need some basic money skills and when we learn to relax about money and how it works, we can spend our time leading more productive lives and not worrying about who earns more.
Learn some basic money skills with our bite-sized online modules.
